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You Can’t Fire Me, I’m a Volunteer!
If you’ve worked in volunteer management for any length of time, you’ve probably heard some version of this fear-inducing refrain. Your first encounter with it may be as a direct threat, a mild joke, or overheard when the volunteer speaking doesn’t kno …
Volunteer Management: How to Get it Right
How essential are volunteers to achieving your nonprofit’s mission? In our recent study, we learned that the lack of understanding about the essential nature of volunteers and the staff who lead them (called Volunteer Engagement Professionals–VEPs) un …
Ask Rita: Do We Need Insurance for Our Volunteers?
Dear Rita: I recently read an article that said it was a good idea to have insurance for volunteers. I thought volunteers had immunity in both federal and state laws. Should I be doing something to protect my nonprofit? Signed, Curious in California …
All Hands on Board: The Board of Directors in All-Volunteer Organizations
This booklet was originally published by the National Center for Nonprofit Boards and the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, which are now respectively known as BoardSource and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. The hardcopy is now out of print. …
When Kids Volunteer: Liability Basics
Whether kids sell cookies or help clean up a park, they are welcome volunteers. Just be sure you know the basics of how to protect them and your organization when it comes to liabilities (at the end of this article is a link to a sample waiver): …
Court-Ordered Community Service: Volunteers or Prison Labor?
Each year, hundreds of thousands of court-ordered community service workers are placed in nonprofits to fulfill their sentences. Although the image is typically one of a teenager sentenced to picking up litter, court-ordered volunteers perform a …
Volunteerism Public Policies Can Hurt Nonprofits
Amidst the predictable praise for volunteerism and the Serve America Act, we at Blue Avocado detect the mooing of a sacred cow. Cow hunter and policy analyst Rick Cohen lets us know the four things we should be worried about with public pol …
All-Volunteer Organization Resources
All-Volunteer Organizations (AVO) are some of the most invisible — and most powerful — nonprofit organizations around. Supporting them is a priority for us at Blue Avocado; here is a list of the articles of particular relevance to AVOs: Boards of All …
Treasurers of All-Volunteer Organizations: Eight Key Responsibilities
More than half of the nonprofits in the United States are estimated to be all-volunteer organizations. Here is a wonderful, succinct guide for the 600,000 + treasurers of such organizations: My time as treasurer of a faith-based nonprofit wa …
Criminal Records Checks for Prospective Staff and Volunteers
Dear Ask Rita: I keep being told we should do criminal record checks on prospective employees and even volunteers and board members. But how? Is there a simple and cheap way to do this? And do we need their permission to do it? — Reluctant to get into …
